All language subtitles for Deja Vu 2006 1080p BluRay DD+5.1 x264-LoRD_track5_eng

BRUCKHE/MER: Hi, I'm Jerry
Bruckheimer, the producer of D�j� Vu.

If you're watching this,

you've activated a seamless
behind the scenes experience

that will continue throughout the film,
with myself, director Tony Scott,

I hope you enj0Y it-

MARSILIII Hello, I'm Bill Marsilii,

writer of D�j� Vu,
with my friend Terry Rossio.

SCOTT: Hi, I'm Tony Scott.
I'm the director of D�j� Vu,

and I hope you enjoy it.

I say what always attracts me
to material is difference.

And I've never done anything
like this before, you know.

And if you look at my last four movies,

they've all been
very different approaches

to, you know, different material.

And this was a real chance for me
to actually pull it off, and...

When I do interviews and stuff,
and do press, the...

I always try to come up
with a one-liner,

you know, that says
what the movie is about,

and I found this impossible to
come up with a one-liner,

It's a love story,
it's a little bit of time travel,

it's science fact rather than
science fiction, it involves a terrorist.

It's a bunch of different stories
that are woven together,

but it's all woven together
around this love story.

You know, Began/u for me is one
of the toughest creative experiences,

because the world of science fiction,

if you get it a little bit wrong,
you get it drastically wrong,

especially when they're trying
to incorporate science fiction

into what is supposedly a real world.

So, I struggled conceptually.

I actually... I struggled because
I wanted to make it science fact,

and the writers were determined
to make it science fiction.

So, I won't say I struggled,
I struggled with them,

to get them off science fiction
and into science fact.

MARSILII: I first became involved with
the story that would become D�tiavu

And Terry called me and I told him
I wanted to write a spec this time,

that is, to write a
completed screenplay on my own,

without any studio notes,
without any pay either, actually.

And I told him
I wanted to write a love story.

And Terry really did something
kind of charming after that.

Unsolicited,
he started sending me ideas

for screenplays,

the rationale being
that if I liked one of them, I'd write it

and he and Ted
would be my producers again.

And I might have mentioned to him...

I think I told him about a movie
that I'd always liked

But something I said
jogged Terry's memory

and reminded him
of a one-page treatment he had

And he started telling me this story,
it was just six paragraphs that he had,

about a detective
whose girlfriend gets murdered

and somehow
he gets a hold of this device

that allows him to look
roughly one week into the past.

And in the process
of using this device,

he watches the last few days
of his girlfriend's life

And as Terry was telling me about it,
I started to get incredibly excited,

and I said, "Wait, wait, wait.
It's brilliant. I love it, but one thought.

"While he's watching
the last few days of her life.

"The first time he sees her
should be at her autopsy,

�cause, you know, how cool is that?
She's already dead."

BRUCKHE/MER: Terry Rossio is one of
the writers of Pirates of the Caribbean

and also worked on National Treasure,

and he came to us
with a new writer named Bill Marsilii.

And I think they met online.

And Terry liked his ideas

and kind of
worked on a screenplay together.

So, knowing Terry was involved,

I knew it was going to be
an excellent piece of work,

and also, you know, Ted Elliott
was also involved in the creation of it.

And you're always looking
for something

that's fresh and unique and different.

That's what D�ja Vu is.
It's a really fresh idea.

I haven't seen a picture like this.
And we read the script.

The script was delivered to us,
you read it.

One of those screenplays
that you couldn't put down.

You had to keep reading it.

You had to watch, I guess, the time

because it went by so quickly.

SCOTT: Yeah, but we did have
a few stumbling blocks.

Our first one, trying to blow up a ferry
in the Mississippi.

The biggest concern was that

the size of the explosion
we wanted to do

could actually
breach the banks of the Mississippi.

So that was a little bit of a concern,

but people were
amazingly cooperative.

I think generally
the people in New Orleans are,

but they were just so grateful
for the fact we were there

and we were employing
a lot of people in the city.

And I think our biggest hardship
was, when we first went down,

there was no room service
and no laundry.

Other than that, it was great.

MARSILII: That's not a model,

and those are not CGI people.

Tony made the, I think, brilliant
though horrifying choice

to do it practical.

Many of the effects in the movie
were done for real.

And...

I can't speak for anybody else
associated with the production,

but me, personally,

I don't think
I could ever open a movie this way

I \ �I \ V, �I

we were gonna save everybody
at the end.

The ferry blow that you see
at the beginning of the movie,

it's the biggest explosion
I've ever done.

The trick there
was not to sink the ferry,

'cause this was a real ferry

and we said, "We're only gonna
put you out of operation for four days."

I think, in actual fact, we put it
out of operation for two weeks.

But we had to put steel plates
on the decks of the ferry

'cause the explosion was so big,

we were scared that the explosive
might not go up, it might go down.

And that would mean,
"Bye-bye, the Stump?

Which is the name of the ferry.

BRUCKHEIMER: Well, you always try
to populate movies with brilliant actors,

and Denzel is in that category.
He's a brilliant actor.

He can do just about anything.

He's very smart,
and he comes off smart on the screen.

And somehow,
he's a very sympathetic character.

SCOTT: And it's funny.
I read the script...

And I always think,
"Well, maybe I should...

"Oh, I'd like to try and work with..."

There's a bunch of actors
I still wanna work with.

When I read the script,
the first 10 pages,

I said, "This role is for Denzel."

And 'cause he...
One, he always delivers.

Two, I really enjoy working with him.
He's tough.

He's tough, but he has
the same work ethic or the same...

He loves research, I love research,

and so, always,
our characters come out of real people

And so that's why
we've done three movies together.

And I think in each movie,
he always delivers.

And each movie,

we've found a different character
that he's never played.

Even though he's played cops,

he's played FBI agents,

and he's never played
an ATF agent before,

but he said, "What am I gonna do?
I've done these guys before."

You know? So...

Don Ferrarone,
who's my guy who's in touch with...

Don's on all my movies

and he's in touch
with the agency world.

And we really did a live casting
of who was a good ATF agent

And we found a guy
called Jerry Rudden.

Rudden was famous in the ATF,

and the ATF are the bomb guys.

Denzel and Jerry grew up
within a few blocks of each other,

, , ' 'M '

And Jerry tells a funny story.
How he got to be a police officer is,

he said being Irish-Catholic
he had three choices.

He could either be a priest, a fireman,
or a police officer,

SCOTT: When you give to actors,
as I did in Man on Fire...

I gave him a role model in real life,

and I did the same here
with Jerry Rudden,

gave him a real role model, so...

It makes life that much easier,

'cause you've always got
a point of reference.

'Cause it's always hard
saying to an actor,

"Well, I think you should be stronger
in the way you deliver the line here,"

or, "You should wear this tie
or these shoes."

But if you have a real person
as a point of reference,

it's always that much easier.

MARSILII: Here we go
into the investigation

that follows
the horror of that explosion.

And we're starting to see
Doug's process that he has.

We all wanted him
to have the kind of insights

where he can take one look
at a crime scene and deduce things

and steer the investigation
in directions that will save everybody

'. � � � � � ' ,' � � �. : � � � �

This bridge scene was part of that.

In our discussions
with several ATF and FBI consultants,

among them Jerry Rudden
from the FBI,

we learned a lot
about ammonium nitrate-fuel oil,

and the kind of residue
that would be involved,

and the bridge offered us
a fantastic chance

to show Doug making an intuitive leap

that otherwise might have
escaped everyone.

SCOTT: Yeah, and we got Val back.

It's my third movie with Val, obviously.

He said I ruined his life
because of that one line,

"You can be my wingman at any time."

'Cause he said
he walks through airports

and some joker will come up and say,
"You can be my wingman anytime."

(LAUGHING) So he wants to kill me.

No, so Val and I did Top Gun,
True Romance, and now this.

And this is a very different character
from... You know, it's...

And I was desperately hunting
for a role model for Val in real life.

And we came up
with two guys from the DEA,

two guys that we found
down in, actually, New Orleans,

and Val found his character
or reference to his character

somewhere between these two guys.

MARSILII: This first scene
between them

was originally
a bit more of a character scene

between Pryzwarra and Doug.

But Jerry loves the process,
and so does Tony,

and we had
a lot of discussions about it.

And now, here I'm going to confess

that the way we kept it
from being purely expositional,

we're pulling
the dirtiest trick in the book.

Doug is risking his life
just to recover some evidence.

And I love the way
Val plays that moment,

because within 30 seconds
of meeting this man,

Doug's literally
trusting him with his life.

It's a fast way to forge a relationship.

We can't rule out an accident
at this point.

-It's not officially a crime scene yet.
-Here's a thought.

Why don't we double the perimeter

so we don't have wall-to-wall trailers
down there?

ELKINS: No, we're gonna need
all our manpower

for evidence control
and witness processing.

MARSILII: One of the first things
that has to be determined

Is whether or not it was an accident
or a deliberate act of terrorism.

Doug found this...

Earlier we see him
finding this blue plastic confetti,

as they call it in the trade,

that was evidence of,

you know, the kind of blue barrels
that you'd find the bomb chemicals in.

And he's laying it all out for them.

(MARSILII LAUGHING)

I still think it strains credulity just a bit

that he found a blasting cap
and leg wire on his way to work,

out of 10 square miles of wreckage,

-Oh, good, good, good.
-Yeah.

And that coffeepot
was also something that we got

from our discussions
with Jerry Rudden.

Often that's the way
he will break the ice

when there's a tense turf war going on
between the numerous agencies

that are first responders
to a disaster like this.

And thus the coffeepot moment
made its way into the movie.

CHAD OMAN: You know, even though
you see all these horrific pictures

of the surrounding areas
of New Orleans,

the inner city's rebounding
and the French Quarter's rebounding.

And it's kind of sad that the media's
playing up the destruction of it,

which it has, believe me.
It's not a pretty picture.

But the city is still vibrant.
People should go there, support it.

It's just a wonderful town.

Hey, did Larry call?

Still not answering his cell.

MARSILII: Here we're planting,
in plain sight, a number of clues

that seem incidental
in the swirl of activity

following a disaster like this.

And later
they turn out to have huge pay-offs.

Listen, I know you're maybe still
pissed off at me...

MARSILII: One of the things
that is kind of subtle

but that I particularly like
about the way this shaped out

is here you've got the hero

of what is going to become
a love story,

and the first time
he hears about our female lead,

his response is,
"Just have them bag it."

And he's actually returning
a phone call to the dead woman

while he's busy doing other things.

He doesn't know it and neither do we,

but I think
there's a really keen irony in that.

Stop right there.

As much as possible, to render
the rest of the movie plausible,

Tony was particularly insistent that we
take as much advantage as possible

of existing
conventional surveillance technology.

Terry and I were always very on board
with that, as well.

We just didn't want it
to overwhelm the rest of the story.

We didn't want the time window
to become, you know, irrelevant

because they were on top of it
with other things.

McCREADY: Can I have
your attention, please?

Thanks very much for coming.

I'm Jack McCready, special agent...

MARSILII: This dialogue
from McCready

was really kind of vital for us,

because, basically,
he's laying out for the press,

and we're laying out for the audience,

the near-impossibility
of solving this crime quickly.

When we were first casting about

for a disaster
that Claire's death could be tied to,

back in October of '97,
I had made a list of a few things:

plane crash, train wreck,
building collapse,

and I had even written,
"Plane flying into skyscraper."

Ultimately, I chose not to use that

because of a Richard Burton film
called The Medusa Touch

One thing here
I want to give Tony full credit for is,

he felt very strongly that he wanted
Doug to have his own process

that involved the city of New Orleans
as much as possible.

-What? Streetcar?
-Hey, don't look at me.

It's part of his process.
He says it helps him think.

SCOTT: The reason that Denzel
was traveling by...

In England we call them trams,

and here
you call them streetcars, yeah?

And these streetcars
actually weren't working after Katrina.

We had to get them all towed
because all the electric were down,

all the lines were ripped up,
you know, but...

And everybody was concerned
that I was making it too, sort of, artsy

and too lyrical, but I said,

"Listen, I'm basing everything
off what Jerry Rudden did,

"who is Denzel's role model,
and what he did."

He walked, he took public transport,

just to find his own space
while he worked things out.

And it's also beautiful,
'cause it's very lyrical

and it's all part and parcel
of the city, very poetic, you know.

And also so this...
This movie is a love story,

so it helped that aspect,
just the background.

So this weird love story that begins
the first time he looks at this woman...

You know, she's lying
on the slab in the morgue.

And I tried to make Paula
as alive as possible,

so we don't see the hand
that actually turns her head.

And her head turns
and her eyes are open,

and she's looking
right into D's eyes, yeah?

So that was a sort of odd beginning,

but even in death, in the morgue,
she looked beautiful.

Hold her hand for me, will you?
Right here.

MARSILII: These missing fingers,
actually, are not merely an attempt

to be gruesome on our part.

They're important
for two reasons, really,

the first of them being
we wanted to make it very clear

� "' � �' ,' � � �'/'

This isn't a case of somebody faking it.

This isn't mistaken identity.

This is a love story

where the first time
the guy sees the girl is at her autopsy.

-Diesel.
-Accelerant, maybe?

MARSILII: The other thing
about her fingers missing is,

in a story like this,
in a mainstream film,

I think the audience takes for granted

that somehow
the hero's going to save her life.

But there's no guarantee that
he'll stop her from being tortured first.

-CARLIN: You see that?
-Duct tape.

SCOTT: You know,
originally, the movie,

when I shot it, was an R-rated movie.

R-rated mainly because of the tone
and the violence and the...

You know, whether it's the stuff
in the medical examiner's office

or the blowing up the ship
at the beginning,

it's a lot more... What's the word?
A lot more graphic.

I don't think it's...

Overall, the R-rated version is a lot
more graphic than this PG version.

I was actually contracted
to do an R version,

but it was hard, actually,
getting it down to a PG.

So everything
that you're gonna see there...

It's not one particular sequence

that makes it distinctively an R,
it's an overall tone.

And everything from the...

Obviously,
all the dangerous sequences,

the violent sequences,
there's nothing...

Unfortunately, there's nothing
in terms of sex that's R,

'cause that wasn't in the actual story,

but violence and content,

in terms of explosions
and the gassing of Paula

is very much different
in the R-rated version.

MARSILII: When Terry first told me
his idea, I loved it,

but as I was looking through it,

there were a number of issues
that really had to be addressed

in order to make the film plausible.

Any real time machine
using existing technology

would have to cost $10 billion

and probably be hooked up
to a mile-wide particle accelerator,

which is why the original draft
of the script had been set

at Brookhaven National Lab
on Long Island.

But given that,

if you've got
a $10 billion time machine,

nobody is going to use it to find out

who killed one woman
that nobody's ever heard of.

Her death, I felt, had to be tied
to something just gigantic,

And when we chose to set the disaster
on a ferry,

In order to drive the bomb
onto the boat,

really became the key
to the whole story.

And where is he now, Alan?

" � *1 \ - \ 'f � ' �. � '. � ' if 'y/

One of the wonderful virtues
of Terry's initial idea

that thrilled me about working on it,

you've got a love story where
the man is an investigator

and the woman's dead,

so it is his job

to go through her apartment,

read her diaries,
look through her photographs,

listen to her answering machine tapes,
and hear her talk to her father.

All of these things
that would normally be considered

incredible invasions of privacy

are actually necessary.

His job requires it.

It's a great excuse to get a man
to pay undivided attention

to the last four days of a woman's life.

See, I know how these things go,
Agent Carlin,

and I need her to matter to you.

1 �\�\'/\\ kgiy/ (It; I� iijiiljj'; ziiijf'; I 'if; , u-"Iky. 'f; z' zriiiljlltii: 'ti;. ','::;$�'_ 'f; t' iiliifi' if: gig" I? 'igifi: �

At one point, it had fallen out
of the movie, in one of the early cuts,

and I begged Tony to put it back in.

It's small,

but it really speaks to that man's grief
at the loss of his daughter.

He knows he's only got
a few moments

with the man who's going to
try and solve her murder,

and in that moment all he asks is,
"Please get to know my daughter.

"| need her to matter to you."

That, I think, resonates with Doug

throughout everything
that's going to follow.

It's his first step down the path
of becoming

more emotionally involved
than he might.

Now, this is a subtle tittie thing
with the cat,

but the cat's
very affectionate with him here,

and then later on,
when he goes back in time

and walks into the house
for the first time, the cat runs away.

Claire says, "She always does that
around strangers."

So, does the cat recognize him?

Here is the scene
where we really get our first clue

that Doug's in the middle
of something strange.

As he's walking through
Claire's apartment,

around the edges, we're getting
to know her a little bit more.

And while we're getting to know her
through the small details of her life,

that beautiful mural that is
uncompleted, she never got to finish it,

we're also getting to see Doug work.

He's very meticulous,
he's very careful.

All of this is going on while
we're laying out these visual clues

that, God willing, will have
very neat payoffs later.

The trick of plotting all of this out was
that everything we're seeing here

has to convince Doug
and the audience

that these are signs of a struggle
from when Claire was abducted.

And then, later on,
each and every one of these things

has to occur on-screen
exactly as they're found here,

only it turns out that
Doug himself left all the clues,

It took forever to plot that out.

And originally, we had
even more moments like that,

these kind of moments
where the story back-flips on itself

At one point,
our executive producer, Chad Oman,

had me prepare a nine-page
document for the production team,

in which I laid out
every setup and payoff in the movie.

There were far too many of them
for Tony's taste,

but we did end up trimming back
to something

that I still think holds up very well.

SCOTT: I think why it's always
a good experience with Denzel,

is because
we have that same intensity

in terms of our work
and getting things right,

and doing the homework to get it right.

And he, like I, was worried
about the science fiction aspect,

Over the years, and three movies,
is trust.

And trusting that...
I always trust him to deliver.

And he always comes with
a ton of his own stuff,

and he always trusts me to deliver
from my end, yeah?

So, the combination...

And we've touched
three very different characters.

And I think he respects the fact I'm
always able to give him a new niche,

even in a world he's touched
many times before,

you know, this world here of the cops,

or, you know, agency guys.

But also, you know, Denzel is great
because he's got such a gravity

in terms of his personality and himself,
and such a reality.

He always... When he finds a
character, he finds it, you know, 200%.

So, therefore, he manages
to sell this world

because people trust in him,
they believe in him,

they believe who he is
when he plays a character,

because he gets so much
into the character.

And he, you know,
Denzel's totally dedicated to his work.

You know, he likes his glass of wine.

He doesn't have a glass of wine,
nothing, for the duration of the movie.

You know,
Denzel's all about getting it right.

But again, it's so... You know,
it's great, I love to educate myself.

And I love to educate the audience
and entertain.

BRUCKHEIMER: I think Tony and I,
there's a mutual respect.

I think he's a brilliant director,

so he's got total control of his set,
as he should,

and the way he works with actors.

And he's wonderful
developing the screenplays

and working on the characters
to make them more in-depth,

and give them layers,

which he loves to do,
he involves the actors in that.

You know, when you find a wonderful
director, you don't want to lose him.

Unfortunately, you know, we can't
work on every film together,

MARSILII: Here's Denny's intro
into the story,

and one of the things
that I like about it is

that his first lines in the movie
are about time.

What his role is going to be
in the rest of the story.

She washed up before the explosion
and against the tide.

Do you have a scenario?

We're into this hangar scene

where Doug is going to lay out
his theory of what actually happened.

So, he's joining
his federal employees who...

A disaster that hadn't happened yet.

...judging by some of the screensavers
in the background,

they did not get the memo on sexual
harassment policy in the workplace.

Good question. Her SUV is missing.

W's atan and red...

What Doug's laying out
for his superiors,

is part of what's gonna get him the job.

They'd originally been looking
for his partner Minuti.

This is how
Claire's the key to the whole case.

It was really kind of vital.

What's important here, in terms of
keeping Claire a key to the case,

is that the bomber
was in direct contact with her.

There's a key line here where he says,

"If we solve her murder,
we solve everybody's."

-What?
-Larry Minuti, my partner.

That's his car right there.

The death of a partner
is one of those things that

we had to be very
careful about, because

� ,' 'u wu ,_ (-' 'w: ' '-. ,1' ' ,_ 'm ' \/' ' ' f' w'
, �. ' ' ' � � ' � Q ', .@' � � ' �' � .@ .@H � � .',' �

And if it weren't going to pay off
in a surprising way later,

But in our conversations
with Jerry Rudden,

he laid it out for us, still,
that there's nothing more devastating

for an investigator.

MARSILII: Then,
to not only lose his partner,

but to later discover that he
was responsible for the man's death.

Sorry.

Now, there are actually two ways
to interpret Minuti's car being there.

One being, that it was at the ferry dock
because Minuti was on vacation

and died in the ferry disaster,

then Doug and the team
only change the way he dies.

Or there's the darker interpretation

that everything
was completely circular.

All right. Let's go find him.

This is another example of

where Tony's visual sense
really informed the movie.

As often as possible, Tony
chose to take these scenes that were,

you know, originally office scenes,
indoor moments,

and place them
in and around New Orleans.

One of the benefits of having
great actors like Denzel and Val...

Like, that moment just a moment ago
where he says, "Oklahoma City."

And Doug says, "Yeah."

As a writer, you can't just write
a two-line exchange like that

and expect it to have any weight.

You have to write out the whole story,
the whole thing.

Give the man a moment
where he talks about

what that experience was to him.

And then you take it out,
and you've got brilliant guys like this

and you shoot it.

And the whole story is in their eyes.

And all the rest of that dialogue
falls out of the movie.

SCOTT: You look at Val in the
movie and I think he's a little different.

Well, he's not a lot different...

He's played character actors before,
but normally Val is a son' of...

You know, the good-looking,

you know, leading man,
but in this he...

He very much wanted
to be in this movie,

and so...
It's so hard with actors, saying,

"I think you should out your hair off,
because I've got this feeling

"you need this,
sort of, really bad haircut,

"and you're gonna wear
this really crumpled suit."

But the guys that we met
motivated the glasses that he wore,

motivated the haircut that he had,
and the suit that he wore.

MARSILII: Earlier, I had mentioned that
Terry's premise was intriguing.

And one of the things that I'd done
at the time was I rented a car

and drove out
to Brookhaven National Lab

in order to see what these
particle accelerators were really like.

And that huge cylindrical chamber
that you're seeing right there,

the production team exactly duplicated

a section of the ion collider
at the Brookhaven National Lab.

T.

And they are in a sound stage
in Downey, California.

Everything in terms
of the main lab here.

'V I 'I

I shot that on Genesis.
All the windows,

all the tiles surrounding that window
were shot on regular def.

So the contrast and the separation,

when you see the finished print,
is huge.

So, the main window,
it hums and sings and stands out.

It's very different from
the other smaller tiles.

And then I shot all of the main lab
on Genesis

because Genesis is a digital camera,

but it's a state-of-the-art
in terms of the digital world.

And everything feels
almost three-dimensional.

It really does feel 3-D.

So that helped, this technology
in this main lab.

It helped this world having...

Using, you know, high-def cameras.

And I think that's gonna become the
way of the world, you know, high-def.

But I've only been using it...
For instance, I shot all my night stuff,

all the car chases at night
we shot just with existing light.

And we shot,
obviously those selected locations

and I shot in low level situations
in which it's at its true strength.

And everything we did
in the "main lab" here, as we call it.

But bright daylight exteriors,
they still haven't quite got it right.

That contrast ratio is too much
for the digital world, still, to hold

in a good and comfortable way.

MARSILII: This cover story
that they lay out for Doug,

about how this is spy satellite video,

this was the most contentious part
of the movie as we were developing it.

We spent months working this over.

And Don Ferrarone,
one of our technical advisors,

pointed out that
with top-secret technology like this,

they would not be likely to tell Doug
what he was really seeing.

So, the compromise position,
the sort of...

Sort of fallback that we all ended up
settling on,

was that they tell him
this is spy satellite video.

And he's immediately skeptical of it,
but he goes along with it.

If the audience sees
that Denzel's not quite buying it...

Can't look back and see
if there was a second gunman.

And they'll be patient,
because they know that eventually

he's gonna get to the bottom
of what's really going on here

and he's gonna blow it open for them.

It's the when that's always constant.

SCOTT: And then
we also had Adam Goldberg,

and Adam, who's the whiz kid
behind the "main |ab" as we call it.

And Adam's character's role-modeled
off a guy called Brian Greene.

And so I gave Adam
a bunch of tapes on Brian,

'cause Brian's a very busy guy, and
then got Adam on the phone with him.

And also we got Brian Greene doing
a video tape demonstration

of what he believed, you know,
the whole theory

of this particular time travel that
we were trying to access in the movie,

what he believed that to be,
and we videotaped him,

'cause he'd done it
in Jerry's office with me.

And then I gave that to Adam,
and Adam copied it.

Adam Goldberg's the
funniest cat on two legs,

but he's very smart, and he...

And his delivery... And that stuff
was tough, 'cause it's a mouthful.

And it's a tough one to sell
the general public on,

who don't really know anything
about this world.

But with Brian Greene's help
and Adam's delivery,

he helped, made it understandable.

Even if people, so far...
Even if the audience don't quite get it,

they buy into it, and they run with it,

which is... That was always my goal.

All right, match the viewer settings
to the signal.

The map, I think, was one of
my fights with the writers,

in that they just wanted it like a pure,
one-shot surveillance camera,

you know, from the corner of a room,
that didn't move, you know.

But I took license,
so I built a joystick onto the desk

where Gunnars has the ability
to zoom in and travel around,

you know, which give it a whole
different life, which wasn't in the...

That wasn't in the original script.

And everybody was worried about
the fact that I was reaching too hard,

and getting too hip,
and doing too many tricks, you know.

Basically, we can walk through walls.

MARSILII: When Doug looks at her
for the first time,

and says, "Claire Kuchever,"

is he just stating her name,
or is he having a d�j� vu moment?

It's kind of interesting
the way that Denzel played that.

SCOTT: This particular scene here

was the first time
that Denzel actually sees Paula.

You know, and that was for me...
I thought... I was really worried about

trying to get that connection
between the two of them.

But... And I did everything, I milked it,
I shot from behind the screen,

you know, through Paula's image
onto Denzel, and vice versa.

But... And I reconstructed that scene
a little bit, so she was left...

You thought she was actually
looking out of the screen at Denzel.

So, I restructured the timing
in the scene.

And you're distracted,
you think she's looking at D,

but in actual fact, she's listening
to her answering machine.

MARSILII: One of the great things
about Tony Scott is that,

typically in a movie like this,
where you've got characters

that are going to staring at a screen
for some time,

the way it's handled in production is,

you stand the actors
in front of a green screen,

they all stare at a big "X"
made of gaffer's tape and

pretend to see something up there,

while somebody else reads
the dialogue off-screen.

And you can burn through pages a day
that way, if that's what you care about,

you know, shooting Denzel
as he falls in love with a big

But Tony chose instead

to shoot all of these
time window scenes last.

First, he shot everything that was
going to be seen in the window,

I:

Then he shut down
physical production of the movie,

for, I think, about a week,

maybe 10 days, to cut all of it together.

Then when the shooting resumed,
with these scenes,

the actors didn't have
to fake everything.

SCOTT: I shot for 14 weeks,

and I shot everything which was...

For instance, Paula going
into that time window.

I then had to put it
into one piece of film

that would serve as every scene,

so I had to get the actors to
sign off to play to that.

They were dictated to by this window,
and actors don't like that.

You know, especially
at 6:00 on a Monday morning,

saying to Denzel, "Well, this is...

"You've gotta play to this
timing in this scene."

But in the end, the guys got into it,

'cause that's the way it was scripted,

and we could do some little changes
and stuff but it was pretty tied down,

in terms of, they had to perform
and act to the window.

MARSILII: Everything on the screen in
the time window that they're looking at,

is being projected onto
the set in real time.

The actors are reacting to the same
visuals that the audience is seeing.

And personally, as a movie fan,

I really like that we went
old-school like that.

Most of the fantastic images
in the film are real,

they're not CG or green screen.

It was a real boat that blew up,

real water, real fire,
the stunts were real.

It would have been cheaper
to do it the other way,

but I really think
we have a richer movie for this.

No, do not give him my number.

SCOTT: I say, one of the challenges
with 40 minutes in an enclosed space...

You know, but it's a very colorful
space, you know, in terms of

all this information, all these windows.

It's a great space.

But it was a very similar challenge
on Crimson Tide,

'cause that was this claustrophobic
submarine environment.

But this had a little more going for me,

in terms of I could use that third
character, which was the window,

And then Paula, Paula Patton, this is...
Paula had done two movies.

She'd done...
She had a very small part in Hitch,

where she looks stunning,

and she just finished a movie
called ldlewild.

But this kid is beautiful, she's honest,

and I think
the right word is "ingenuous, "

'cause you... She just soaks you up.
You're engaged by her.

And so... But she's relatively new
in terms of her acting career.

But she's got great instincts.
But most of all, you adore her,

which was perfect for this role,

'cause it's very hard to find someone
who has the right qualities

for a voyeuristic relationship.

You know, for the... If there'd been
something a little more sexual...

Paula is sexy, but...

But as, I mean, something
little off sexual-wise...

Or Denzel had played it a little off,

it could have become,
I said, voyeuristic

and sort of a little nasty.

But then, D was absolutely...
Denzel was...

He said, "This girl is so stunning,
she's so beautiful,

He said, "And that's in the best
and strongest possible way,"

and that was great for the character.

BRUCKHEIMER: No, we never made
a decision to cast an unknown.

I think we just wanted
to get the best actress

we could find who fit the part.

It's a very difficult part

because you have to fall in love
with this woman

without her really saying much,

or having any interaction
with the lead characters

until halfway or three quarters
of the way through the movie.

And that's a very difficult role to play.

So, we had to, you know,
photograph her

in such a way that she is sympathetic,

endearing, engaging.
And that's what Tony did.

And Paula has just this
enthusiasm and energy,

and she's very uplifting.

She's the kind of person
that you wanna have around you,

because, you know, she's always got

a wonderful smile on her face
and a great laugh,

and she's always looking
at the brighter side of things,

which is what you want.

MARSILII: Again, one of the wonderful
virtues of Terry's original concept,

there are scenes like this,

that you really can't do
in any other kind of story.

You've got a man reading
this woman's journal,

and then watching her record
the very same thing he's reading,

and she's so spooked by
what she's starting to sense.

It's his first clue that they might be
affecting the past somehow.

One of the wonderful things
that Paula brought to the role...

God, thank you for blessing me
with this food...

Our first meeting with her, she wanted
to talk about her character a bit.

And we'd never met,
although we became fast friends

because it was her first
really big break and mine, too.

Of all the things she could've
latched on to about Claire's character,

she wanted to talk about
Claire's spirituality.

There are touches of it still in the film,

where she had suggested that
her mother had passed away

not long before the movie takes place.

And that she was a bit spiritually adrift.
She still wanted to believe in God,

but she couldn't imagine herself
going to church again.

And her father asks her to come to
church with her the following Sunday,

that Baptist revival meeting
that's on her refrigerator.

That ft yer is actually an invitation
from Claire's father.

And Claire dies
before she has a chance to go.

These were all suggestions
that Paula had made

and I thought they were lovely.

Everything God has done
will remain forever.

SCOTT: This particular scene here is
the oldest graveyard in New Orleans,

and all the graveyards in New Orleans
are actually below sea-level.

So when they get flooded
all the bodies float to the top.

The city's so unlike America.

It is, 'cause it's so much more
European in terms of flavor and look.

BRUCKHEIMER: Well,
we looked at Seattle.

We needed a ferry
and Seattle had a ferry.

Also on the East Coast.
We could've gone to the East Coast,

but Tony loved
the quality of New Orleans.

And after Katrina hit,
we were supposed to start in October,

of course we couldn't,
because the city was devastated.

But Denzel felt that the people in
New Orleans needed a shot in the arm

and he gave up quite a bit of money
to delay the movie

and to begin shooting
in February there.

MARSILII: Throughout the movie we
wanted our villain and the investigators

to really be as smart as possible.

Terry came up with this bit
about the limo drivers.

I thought it was a great way
to have the bomber be there

without the audience wondering why
they didn't catch on or pick him up.

One of the things
we learned in our research was that

investigators will scope out a funeral
to see if the killer showed up

in order to gloat.

Or in Oerstadt's case
he's actually showing up

because he wants to see
whether or not they're onto him.

Whether or not they realize that
Claire's the key to the whole thing.

And once Oerstadt sees that
he knows it's time to start running.

They got good food there.

(I " " ' (I " \' ' 'I Q "

SCOTT: In a similar way, but that was
10 years ago, Enemy of the State...

Now, I went and did my homework
on all those techno-nerds

And Enemy of the State
was a homage to The Conversation,

But I will say I updated it.

All the kids in that surveillance-techno
world which is the NSA world,

were taken from me during
my research going to NSA

and looking at the kids who actually...

You know, and at the CIA watching
all these kids walking around

in bell-bottomed jeans,
and carrying computers, and long hair.

You know,
gone were the days of the suits.

And the same with Brian Greene
and Elden Henson

and Shanti, Erika.

I got all those ideas for my cast
from meeting the real guys

and seeing documentaries about
those guys in white,

and they're all
wannabe rock 'n' rollers.

MARSILII: One of the things that
Terry in particular was adamant about,

that with all these investigators

and all this conventional
evidence recovery going on,

we really had to be sure
that the crime was still unsolvable

This scene where we got the ability

to listen in on a conversation
that took place four days ago

That was a great way to demonstrate
how important this technology is.

It's also interesting that Doug
immediately picks up,

the moment he hears this man's voice,
that that's the guy.

Now, it's subtle,
but throughout this scene

you can hear Oerstadt later telling her,

telling Claire that there's another car
that he's also got his eye on,

and if it doesn't work
he'll get back to her.

This is kind of a classic example of
one of those story choices

that only happens
after you let the idea

marinate in your brain for a little while.

When I was first outlining the story
I knew that I wanted a paradox

where Doug is responsible
for his partner's death.

But it was months into the process
when I thought,

"Hey, wait a minute. What if
it turns out they also got Claire killed?"

It had to be subtle,

because we don't want Doug to seem
negligent for missing it.

But it's right there in plain sight.

The killer would have left her alone
if Doug and the team hadn't interfered.

Which is just one paradox
on top of another.

Behind the guy on the left.

One of things that Tony and Jerry
were particularly strong on

The time-window is a tool
that they're using and it's vital,

but it's only one part of the arsenal.

And it's kind of fun to watch them use
conventional surveillance technology,

face-recognition software,
everything they can

in order to get to the bottom of this.

Because the time window
is being surrounded

by so much other technology that is

real, that is currently being used,

it adds a layer of authenticity
to this, that

I give Tony full credit for.

Now, they're about to find
a piece of video

Directly to the bombing,

where they've got just a glimpse
of him at the dock.

And it's vital. It's only a glimpse of him,

but it gives us a vital piece
of information that Doug can use later

when he wants to send a warning
back to himself.

It wouldn't be enough
just to send a note back

that says the ferry's gonna blow up,

because that wouldn't help anybody
catch the guy who did it.

Oerstadt could just abort the mission
and go blow up something else,

something even bigger.

We needed to have Doug see him
doing something

that could get him arrested.

And videotaping a secure area
at 4:00 in the morning worked for us.

BRUCKHEIMER: Well, when we used
Val for Top Gun,

he was, you know, a young,
up-and-coming actor,

and on his way to Hollywood, I think
he was in New York at the time,

and he was in a play at that time,

and we saw what a
gifted young man he was

and put him in a leading role,
which turned out to be a big movie,

we didn't know when we were
making it we were making a big movie,

we just thought we were making,

you know, a very effective movie,
but the audiences agreed with us.

It became a movie that's still,
you know, being played today

on DVD players around the world.

And, you know, it's always great
when you see actors spar

and, you know, have to work in
front of a camera, and you get the...

I guess, the opportunity
to watch them do it

and be a fly on the wall.

And they're both really professional,

and know their lines,
and are ready to go to work,

and have a good time doing it.

So, Val...
Coming back together with Val,

I've stayed in touch with him
through the years,

and finally found something
that he would do with us,

And also, you know, Val...

Actors love to take on challenges
of playing different types of characters.

And the fact that he got the opportunity
to play somebody who's very smart,

you know, I guess he felt
that was something he could do.

SCOTT: You know, I'm always
criticized for my visual style,

'cause they always think
it's style over content.

So, Ridley and me, and everybody that

comes out of commercials,
are always criticized.

I mean, me more than anybody,

'cause I think I always
reach harder and farther,

in trying to try different things.

But style for me is always dictated to
by the material,

and by the world I'm trying to get into.

And you know, this movie...

Felt it needed a different touch,
a different feel,

And, as I say, the center of the movie
is a love story.

So, I always look for the center,

and I look for the world of the ATF,
and I look for Jerry Rudden's world.

And somehow, I felt
it needs to be simpler

and slower, and...
But still rich in terms of look.

So, what we did, we did what
are called cross-process,

which heightens the contrast,

and just makes everything that little...
A little richer.

And we varied the amounts
of cross-process depending on

what sequences we were shooting,

where we were shooting,
and how we were shooting it.

But it just makes the film...
The blacks that much richer,

And you're still getting...

It's a little dangerous,
'cause your mid-tones can...

You can lose them altogether,
and we get so contrasty.

But I just thought, it really is
such a high-tech film,

and I wanted that sort of...
This brightness and hardness.

It just felt like that was right
for this material.

BRUCKHEIMER: You know, for us,
we love verisimilitude,

so we always bring experts
into the projects we work on,

so we can learn, and also, the
audience can learn at the same time.

We try to give it
some sense of authenticity.

And Brian Greene is a physicist
and an author,

and understands a lot of things
that we don't understand,

and enlightened us on string theory,

So, we got educated,
and so did our writers,

and so did Tony, and so we
incorporated it into the screenplay.

MARSILII: Tony wanted to adhere to
science fact.

He didn't want to make a "woo-woo
science fiction movie," as he calls it.

In fact, when we first talked to him,
he wanted to cut

the time-window completely,
and replace it

with conventional spy satellites.

The idea being that the data would
take four days to download,

much as it's being described here.

Then, much later in the story,

when it was time for Doug
to go back in time,

they'd reveal a completely different
device that they had.

SCOTT: There was a lot
of pull and push between...

Between myself and the writers

was the science fact
versus science fiction, you know.

And for me, this movie was
the science of surveillance

that segues into time travel.

And, really, that was the one-liner
I could give on the movie.

And it's...

And my battles were those,
trying to get the guys to say,

"Listen, I'm really worried
about it being science fiction."

MARSILII: The explanations that follow

were the source of endless, endless
developmental wrestling, arguments.

Scientific exposition, in general,
is tough to put across on-screen,

but especially here,
if we weren't careful,

There's nothing worse
than having somebody

meticulously explain something
that you don't really care to know.

On the other hand,
Tony and Jerry clearly had a point.

Something as fantastical
as this time window,

really demands an explanation,

and Doug would demand
an explanation.

Especially in a movie where
everything else is as real

as the technology here.

So Terry and I took two tacks
in order to make this work.

For one,

we put some of the arguments that
we were having behind the scenes,

on-screen, into the movie.

It is frustrating to try to explain this,
it's frustrating to try to understand it,

the answers inevitably involve
all kinds of high-end physics stuff,

so we chose to let Doug be frustrated.

Let Denny have a hard time
explaining it.

Let them, you know, fall back
on the same sales pitch

they used at the grant committee
to get the funding for this thing.

And sometimes, that's really
the best way through a problem

when you're working on a story.

The fact that we were having so much
conflict behind the scenes on this

ended up enhancing the scene.

-If we keep the mass low...
-No!

And the second thing we decided,

the second thing we did,
was to use humor.

I had been living in New York,
with my then-pregnant wife,

when that massive
four-day blackout hit,

that took out half
the Eastern Seaboard.

It was sweltering, and it was horrible,

but it came back to me later,
when we were

in Jerry's office,
talking with Dr. Greene

about how much power
it would take to bend time.

And I thought it was a fun way
to make this even more plausible.

BRUCKHEIMER: I think
the hardest part in a movie like this

is to make the audience believe
what's actually happening,

and create a scenario
that they can live with, understand.

And that's the problem
with pictures like this,

unless they're totally science fiction,

and we wanted to do more
science fact than science fiction.

So, by bringing in the experts
that we brought in,

they helped me understand,
which helped us, in turn,

make the writers understand,
and, hopefully, in turn,

making the audience understand
what's going on.

SCOTT: We shot an additional scene,

and the additional scene
was to help clarify

you know,
why Denzel's character comes...

SCOTT: When he gets back at the end,

you know, and how he gets back
at the end, there were two theories,

and both theories were supported
by Brian Greene.

4 /'\�\'/\\ ;';I;\\//j//;\\~ ;';';\\\�:Z/L 'LXI zfigsLiii 'Li'. I?!' ""1; ;;;_,'zi.': L�! 33:::::__-'_I"y::" ~;t::;;:�;{:::: 'If?!' 'iifigi�fxi I: Fig'

But there's a theory of parallel
universes at any one moment in time.

There's another universe where you're
sitting talking to another Tony Scott.

Yeah. Or the other one is split
the universe, diverse universes.

And Brian said both are,
you know, pretty valid theories,

if there ever is gonna be such a thing
as time travel.

He said, "Take whichever one
you wanna go for."

And Brian, he saw the final movie
and he said, "Damn, you sold me,"

which is good, which is the biggest
pat on the back I could get.

. ' '. � 'W. m

MARSILII:
It was important here, though,

to establish some scientific theory

that at least allowed for the possibility.

Denny's telling the truth.

This is not the prevailing,
accepted theory,

the "branching universe theory,"
as we call it,

but some do believe that it's possible.

It was important for Doug to have that

so that he didn't just seem to be
committing suicide later in the film.

It's not quite clear perhaps,
from the geography of the movie,

but this time displacement chamber
where they're putting the note,

and where later Doug himself will go,

this chamber is directly behind
the screen that they're watching.

That is how Doug's able to shine
a laser light straight through it

and into the past itself.

SHANTI: We're ready.

It's kind of interesting because,
considering the end of the film,

when we're going to have the
four-day-old version of Doug show up,

having never met Claire,
but finding her strangely familiar,

like so much else in the film,
we were able to hide it in plain sight.

The other Doug is there
on the screen, in the time window.

They're watching him right now.

But we still manage to forget about it,
if the movie's been pulled off correctly.

If we got away with it,
the audience has forgotten he's there,

off back in his own house,
living the rest of his life that night,

while our guy is trying to save Claire.

One of the things I'm very
happy about with, the way

the time window lab technicians
have been characterized in the movie,

Denny was inspired
by a Brookhaven physicist

who had died
in the Swiss Air Flight 111 crash.

I was intrigued because the man's
website... He looked like a guitarist.

His website listed all of his
publications on quark-gluon plasma,

and right next to them was a list
of all his favorite garage bands

We wanted to flip the movie clich�

that physicists are all nerds,
or unattractive somehow.

We knew we were going to be
with these people for a long time,

and it was a conscious choice
to give them a sense of humor,

really do justice to them as characters.

If they're people
you enjoy hanging out with,

that'll make it
that much more palatable

when it's time for them to get serious.

SCOTT: Matt Craven,
who's in Crimson Tide...

Yeah, so this is my second time
out with Matt.

And I just thought that Matt was
a real good combination in terms of

a buddy for Denzel in this movie.

Put it down, Larry. I'm not coming back.

MARSILII: It's kind of interesting
the way this shakes out,

because with these paradoxes,

especially once Doug and the team

begin actively trying
to change the past,

time itself becomes like
another character in the movie.

Ostensibly, our villain is the bomber,
but really it's time itself,

or fate, destiny.

It's constantly outwitting Doug.
It's constantly one step ahead of him,

anticipating everything
that he thinks of doing,

until everything ends up exactly
the way it was supposed to go

in the first place,
no matter what he does.

Tony likes to joke sometimes that the
movie is about Denzel versus Jesus.

But another way to look at it is that
it's Denzel versus time, or destiny,

SCOTT: You know, I had found this guy
in the bayou who bred pit bulls

and he was a good 0|' boy
from the South, from New Orleans.

So I got him, I cast him. Then we went
out and actually put him on tape here.

And this guy's extraordinary.
He was way out there.

Brilliant. A guy called Chad.

Anyway, I made the mistake of
giving it to JC, just for 20 minutes

and all of a sudden
he became this guy.

It was fantastic,
'cause it was audio-visual.

And he worked so hard
at his New Orleans accent

and this character...
Just after 20 minutes.

And it took me a lot
to talk him off the ledge.

But it's funny, all this stuff
all in the dark here at night,

this was Genesis at night in the rain

in February, in New Orleans.
February in New Orleans is freezing.

Don't let anyone ever
tell you otherwise.

It is so cold. Night shooting in the rain
with Genesis.

Genesis is still, you know...

Digital cameras still have this umbilical
cord, so it's all a pain in the ass.

We managed to get it down in the end
so it became less cumbersome.

But it's still tricky,
especially night-shooting in the rain.

GUNNARS: He's still breathing.

MARSILII: We're setting up
the big goggle-chase here.

One of the wonderful things for me
about working with Terry was that

he and I think on the same sort of
off-kilter wavelength.

My initial outline had this split-level
car chase with these time goggles.

I really desperately wanted to
do it because,

well, I'd never seen anything
like it before

and whenever you can do
something like that with a car chase,

that's golden.

I was afraid he might not go for it,

because it requires
another leap of scientific faith

on the part of the audience.

It's one thing to say
that we can look back in time

using this gigantic, you know,
time-window device

and this huge particle accelerator,
or whatever it is that powers it.

I was afraid
it might seem like too much

that we also have a portable version
that can fit on somebody's back.

Fortunately, Jerry, Tony, everybody
involved got on board with it.

With the drama of the scene
and the cool mechanics,

the dynamics of this chase
were just so irresistible

that we were willing to
push the bounds of science fact.

SCOTT: I think the movie's got,
you know,

some really unique aspects to it.

For instance the...
Which is all Bill Marsilii,

you know, who was the original writer.

Which is, you know...
Car chases have been done to death.

You know, shootouts
have been done to death.

And always the true strength
is concept or idea.

And that's what was
so interesting here, 'cause the idea...

I don't think I shot the car chase
particularly well.

To be honest with you, I thought it was
pretty mediocre, what I did,

by nature of time
and logistical problems and stuff.

But the concept is so strong,

In terms of the general public
who have seen it.

MARSILII: One of the movies
that for me

that had kind of inspired
this goggle chase...

There was a Clint Eastwood movie,
one of the Dirty Harry films,

I think it was The Dead Pool,
where there's a car chase.

Everything about it obeys
the normal conventions of a car chase,

but one of the cars is a toy car
with a bomb in it.

Oh, shit!

What? What happened?
What happened?

And once we got into this idea

of goggles
that would extend the time window,

it got really fun to sit down and
come up with all kinds of variations on,

"Okay, what could happen
during this chase?"

Okay, I got him. I got him.
He's back in range.

One of the little secrets
I can tell you here is

that the only reason
the time window goes back

four days, six hours
and some minutes,

was so that during this car chase,

Oerstadt could be driving on an empty
road in the middle of the night,

while Doug has to plow
through rush hour traffic.

We didn't originally envision
so much vehicular mayhem,

but it is pretty exciting.
I'll give him that.

One of the fun things
with this goggle chase was

ringing all the possible changes on,

"Okay, what possible situations
could we have?"

There's a moment where
the bad guy's got a clear road

and Doug doesn't.

Good. Now stay with him.

At one point Oerstadt stops

at an accident
and that causes Doug to

have to stop
in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Originally, in fact, we had a moment
where Doug hits the brakes

and actually slides
into Oerstadt's back seat.

He puts the goggles on

and he is inside the other guy's car.

They've overlapped in time.

It turned out to be incredibly daunting,
physically to do that

and Tony also felt that it was
a bit "woo-woo." Science fiction.

So, instead we gave him this 180 spin.

SCOTT: Actually, on first screening,
we had one bad laugh, which...

I died, 'cause I thought
we'd really screwed up.

I thought that was it.

It's where Denzel... He spins his truck
and he ends up facing Jim Caviezel.

And Jim Caviezel, obviously,
played Christ in The Passion.

And Denzel said...
Spontaneously, he just said,

"Jesus, yeah, he's dead ahead of me."

And we had it in the cut and nobody
in the editing room spotted it.

And all the audience laughed out loud,
there was this roar of laughter.

We thought we'd fallen off the wagon
in terms of credibility.

It was because JC, as we called him,
Jim Caviezel.

I think Jim's real name
was Doug Caviezel.

Till he did the Passion,
he changed it to Jim Caviezel.

Consequent initials JC.

MARSILII: And yet another situation
now, we've got a scene where...

Earlier we had
Doug being able to see,

and the guys
at the time-window lab can't.

Now the goggle's smashed, so they
can see what's going on and he can't.

Whenever you've got something
like this,

you really wanna try
and take advantage of

every possible cool moment within it.

And I'm so glad
we got as many of them as we did.

SCOTT: And I felt I was always a little
bit, little bit, little bit loose.

Not loose in terms of
the size of my frame.

But I never quite got a handle
on this goggle rig.

I mean, trying to...

I just hoped that the audience
was getting enough of this.

Goggle rig was actually
the piece of technology

which is communicating
all this back there.

They obviously get it.

But I wanted to make that connection
I didn't feel was strong enough.

'Cause I felt, I wanted to get inside
the rig a little bit more.

Inside, you know, Denzel,
the pupil of his eye,

and do that sort of stuff, you know.

You know, so I never quite got it
as sophisticated,

or as much of a study
as I wanted to make it, you know.

BRUCKHEIMER: Well, Tony
loves to storyboard things.

In fact, everything that he does
is storyboarded, every single scene,

he gets up at 4:00 in the morning,
and he starts doing his storyboard.

Something like a
Hummer chase, of course,

We started filming it.

He does a lot of the drawing himself.
He brings the storyboard artist.

But every frame of this film
was storyboarded.

MARSILII: One of the things

that strongly helps motivate
this chase for me

is that we've seen earlier
that Minuti is still breathing.

Yes, it's been four days
since he got shot,

but there is still somehow
the possibility, at least,

that his partner is still alive.

And if that weren't enough,

this might be their last chance
to track down Oerstadt.

If they lose sight of him here,

they could probably
lose sight of him forever.

This is Doug's only chance
to track him down

To ultimately go back and try
to save everybody on that ferry.

SCOTT: I wasn't just shooting
in New Orleans,

but I shot a lot in the bayou, you know.

And that was never in the script.
Long Island was in the script.

But I just wanted, you know...

And, so, therefore,
I adapted lots of locations

and moved them out of the city.

And the bayou in winter.

'Cause, you know, we ended up
because of Katrina... Originally,

we were meant to be
shooting in September.

And because of Katrina, we had
to move our shoot back till the winter,

but I love the winter in the bayou.

Those birch trees
became sort of silver white,

and the graphics were spectacular.

And after Katrina happened,
they wanted me to go to Miami.

And wanted me to go to Seattle

which would've been
different movies there, but...

You know, it's hard to let go

because it became such
an important character in the movie,

where we placed the movie.

And I couldn't come to terms
with those other places,

they'd have been different movies.

MARSILII: Yet another example
of planting the clues in plain sight

to what's going to happen later.

No. Nothing.

Originally, we had a couple of lines
earlier in the FBI briefing scene

where somebody alluded to the fact

that somebody claiming to be a
federal agent stole an ambulance

out of the hospital, the other night.

But, ultimately,
that fell out of the picture.

The sequence that's coming up now,

as Doug makes his way into
the bait camp with the backpack,

and the fellows back
at the time-window lab,

are talking him through it
describing everything.

Do you see him?

I was reminded of a scene
in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca,

which is also present in the
Daphne du Maurier novel.

Mrs. Danvers is describing
to Mrs. de Winter

how Rebecca used to
walk across the room.

"There's where
she used to write her letters.

"There's where
she would lay her things.

And you're following it
in an empty room.

I think it's the diesel fuel,
like at the ferry.

Doug's having that
same sort of experience here.

I have to say, watching this,

it's one thing to write
a line of stage direction that says,

"Shanti begins to cry."

It's another thing to see it.

I really love the performances
from these folks.

The moment between
Elden and Erika there,

as they're watching what's happened,

really sells the impact of this for me.

Doug still has some hope
that he's wrong here and...

Of course, getting shot and stabbed
and set on fire is not enough.

Tony felt that it was really important

that he also get eaten
by alligators afterwards.

SCOTT: But actually a little spooky
because all the alligators around there,

and they're all in hibernation.

But we came in with our air boats, and
these alligators are really pissed off.

So they come out, they're all trying
to sleep for the winter, so...

And alligators can move fast.

They can do the 100 yards
in even time, yeah,

so you gotta get out of there.

MARSILII: If we had chosen to,
we could have decided

that the reason
they're watching this woman

is because
she's the President's daughter,

or the Prime Minister,
or something like that.

That would've been one way to solve
a number of plot problems

as we were creating the story.

But Terry and I both felt

that the wonderful thing about it
is that she's a normal woman,

living her life,
coming out of a bad relationship,

and she's looking forward to a future
that's never gonna happen.

As they're discussing
the possible ramifications

of whether or not
they've changed the past,

it's also kind of intriguing

that now they're part of
what they're investigating.

They're not just watching.

They have to discuss whether or not
they're responsible for it.

Also, these guys are physicists,
they're not investigators by trade.

� Flw. � w. '

They're not used to
seeing people get killed.

It's kind of uniquely frustrating
to be a witness to a murder,

and they're not allowed to
testify about it.

All they could do was watch.

When Doug finds
Claire's earring there,

this is how he knows
this is where she was killed.

This is where he has to go,

when he comes back in time,
steals an ambulance,

that's where he has to drive,
if he's going to save her life.

SCOTT: Carroll Oerstadt, the bad guy,

Jim Cavieze|'s character,
we adapted him,

we put him...
He had a house in the 9th Ward.

And, so, when they eventually locate,
you know, where he lives,

they go to the 9th Ward,
which is the area

that got hit the hardest during Katrina.

This particular sequence here is,
was in the 9th Ward.

But, emotionally, everybody is like
they were knocked sideways,

you know,
looking at all that devastation,

and it was emotionally very upsetting.

The guys were...
They were all dragging all afternoon.

MARSILII: At one point,
Tony had wanted the scene to play out

in a son' of
a cookie cutter suburban area.

And then, after Katrina,

we realized that if we were going to
portray the devastation at all,

this was really the place to do it.

Oerstadt, as a character,
has relatively little screen time

where we actually get to hear him talk.

So, by his very nature,

we need to see whatever we can
about him through implication.

BRUCKHEIMER: You know, Tony
found a location for the Oerstadt chase,

where he was arrested,
that he felt was intriguing.

And that's why he picked the bayou,
it's really beautiful looking

and the way he shot it
makes it even prettier.

SCOTT: When we were
scouting the bayou,

we were scouting in airboats,

which are brilliant. Yeah.
'Cause you can go over...

You can actually drive...
We were driving across roads

and over intersections
in these things, in these airboats.

And I just thought it was interesting
to have Oerstadt try to escape

When we shot that sequence there,
it was pouring with rain, it was...

But it worked for the sequence.

MARSILII: This interrogation scene
was informed to a great extent

by transcripts from Timothy McVeigh
that Tony had found.

And he also had video footage of
ATF interrogations of other bombers.

And we did use some of it here,
particularly in Doug's trade craft.

Often an investigator
will flatter the suspect,

as Doug does here, saying,
"We're impressed with the expertise.

"Could you help us out? Tell us
how you did this? It's fascinating."

But we didn't want
Oerstadt's military background

to ultimately be the thing
that motivates him.

Terry and I were very strong that
we wanted this character

to really be about destiny.

It's much more in keeping with
the themes of the rest of the film,

if everything he does is motivated out
of a sense of thwarted destiny.

There was a way that his future
was supposed to go and it didn't.

And he's taking steps to rectify that.

SCOTT: Yeah, it's funny
'cause I didn't...

When I was trying to piece together,

it's really tough trying to
piece together a bad guy.

Even though, in the script,
it was a domestic terrorist and...

But I did... They didn't...

They didn't have him down
in terms of who he was,

and I'll be very blunt here.

The guy was not a good bad guy.
He was stereotypical.

And I had a different sort of feel
or a different actor in mind,

and then I only met with JC,
Jim Caviezel

because Denzel's agent is his agent.

And I said,
"| don't wanna meet with Jesus."

I said, "He's not right for this role."

And, now, he came in. He sat with me
for 30 seconds. I said, "You got it."

I said he's great, 'cause JC
is such an extraordinary odd individual

And the character you see
in this movie is JC.

BRUCKHEIMER: I think Jim wanted
to do a part like this

because, you know,
he's remembered as Jesus.

And he wants to be remembered
as a good actor.

And that he's versatile and you can
make him play any kinds of parts.

The fact that he took on this role
was a thrill for us

'cause he's such a gifted actor.

And he does
such wonderful preparation.

He spent a lot of time
reading transcripts

from people who were serial bombers

or people who were,
I guess you would say,

on the wrong side of the law.

And really got into their psyche.

And fortunately for us,
transferred it to the screen.

He's a very creepy character
on screen.

MARSILII: This scene perhaps

more than any other
critical exchange in the film

was really improved
through Tony's fidelity

to research,
through Jim Caviezel's suggestions

for what motivated the character,
how he wanted to play it,

and certainly, you know,

Terry and I,
our own views on the subject.

The danger when you have
three or four people collaborating

on what a scene should be about,

is that it'll end up a horrific jumble.

This all came together very well.

-'Cause I seen what's coming.
-Did... Have you? What?

In fact, it was during
the course of our meetings

about the interrogation scene

that it occurred to me
that a bomb has a destiny,

"a predetermined fate set by the hand
of its creator," as Oerstadt says.

He's got a second sense about this.

He knows that
he's never going to be convicted,

that the case is never
going to go to trial,

because ultimately,
he's going to die on the ferry.

And anyone who tries to alter
that destiny will be destroyed.

He might not know that that's how
it's gonna go,

I'm happy that we lucked onto
that metaphor that, with a bomb,

"Anyone who tries to stop it
from happening causes it to happen."

That's really the theory
that Doug is up against

throughout the whole movie.

He's been trying to prevent
Claire's death,

trying to prevent the ferry explosion.

And could he actually be
helping it happen?

SCOTT: Bruce Greenwood
was another great actor

that I wanted to work with
for a long time, but...

No, I had a great collection of actors,

and they feel very real,
there's a strength.

And nobody feels out of place,
nobody feels shooed-in,

they all feel like they sit comfortably.

MARSILII: We were really great fans
of law enforcement,

and we were pretty clear
that we didn't want anybody

on the law enforcement
side of the story to be a bad guy.

McCready's being harsh here,
but he's absolutely right.

They've got the evidence they need.

Using this machine,

at least in theory,
got one of their agents killed.

And Val's character isn't
a bad guy either.

He had to file a report.
He waited as long as he could.

SCOTT: And this roll I shot with
sunglasses on. Jerry hated me for that.

Wanted to see their eyes.

He thought Val...

Although the sun was going down
and I think Val had his glasses on,

so I think that gave D the idea
to put his glasses on.

To be honest, in hindsight, I think

maybe I should've shot the scene
without the sunglasses,

'cause it's a pivotal scene,
an emotional scene,

so therefore, it would've helped a little
bit if you had seen D's eyes.

I think we shot this whole scene
in 40 minutes,

because we started off
shooting the scene,

had rainbirds,
and we were in good shape...

We were meant to start
shooting at, like, noon,

and had the rainbirds,
we were gonna shoot it in the rain,

'cause it was, you know...

That other stuff we'd seen
in the bayou was in the rain.

And the guys
had all these plastic macs on.

And the rain sounded like fish frying.

The sound was just impossible,

so in the end I just ripped
their raincoats off and we shot it.

MARSILII: People have asked me
if D�y�vu was a response

to the September 11th attacks.

And of course, it wasn't originally.

It was something that we'd been
working on for many years before that.

But one thing that I did take away
from that experience,

was the memorial service,

the candlelight vigils
that happened afterwards.

They were heartbreaking.

And I thank Tony and Jerry, because
they were expensive to shoot.

It took a long time.

And it's only a touch, but

I give them full credit that
they went that extra mile to include it.

Personally, it was important to me.

SCOTT: All these pictures you see
in Paula's apartment are of Paula.

She gave me a whole bunch of boxes
of her pictures,

just 'cause when she
was a kid, her parents

obviously photographed
her growing up.

So, all those pictures you see,
those are pictures of Paula.

' .' M .' ' .' ' _ ' �_ '.' ' .' '4' (I\ W'.' (�

MARSILII: Denzel, Jim, Paula,

and then later, even Adam, with
the Denny character, who's so cynical,

all of them, at one point or another,
suggested moments

in which their characters were seen
as having a spiritual dimension.

And the danger is always about

becoming too
heavy-handed about that,

and nobody wants to get
a Sunday school lesson

when they're out to see
a good action film.

But the fact that they all saw that
in the story and embraced it,

really warmed my heart.

And it gave me some hope that maybe

the same themes would
reach an audience the same way.

We both know what happens if I don't.

I mentioned a moment ago

that we didn't want anyone
to come off as a bad guy,

In an early cut of the film,
Val's last moment in the story

was when he tells Doug,
"It's not your fault Claire dies."

And reshot this,
and added an extra moment

where Val tacitly approves of
what they're about to do.

Nobody here wants
a disaster to happen.

This scene coming up,
when Doug goes back

and Denny helps him out,

I got a phone call
the day that they were shooting this.

Adam Goldberg
had asked for an exchange

where Doug asks him,

you know, "Why are you helping
me to do this?

"| thought you didn't believe
it was possible to change the past."

And Adam suggested the line,
"Yeah, but I do believe in God."

And I said, "Adam said that?"

There were spiritual themes
in the movie

that I was hoping nobody would notice
until it was too late to out them.

So, I suggested a slight addition.

"Don't tell anybody."

He doesn't want to lose his cynical,
physicist science cred.

And I'm really happy with
the way he played it.

SCOTT: You know, the time box,
or whatever you want to call it,

that's a really hard thing
to make credible, you know, so...

And obviously,
we educated the audience

in terms of the process of sending
solid matter back

where we sent the note back,
and we put it into that little time box.

And originally, the machine that
actually transports objects back,

again, I went into the real world
and took it from an MRI machine.

You know, so I took an MRI machine.

But in the end they say,
"Well, we've never sent humans back."

Or they say they've
never sent humans back.

So therefore, it felt like
an MRI machine is built for a human,

so therefore, we just made Denzel
climb into this little box, you know.

So we had to try and find something
that I felt was more credible.

You know, it feels like
he's one of those astronauts,

when he's sitting in there
talking back to him.

So, that was good, in that it had
a sense of humor to it, as well.

So, the humor and
the moon-shot quality, you know,

gave a sort of credence, or a validity,
to what we were trying to do.

MARSILII:
One of the potential stumbling blocks

of the original premise was

that if you could use this machine
to go back, or to send something back,

why would anybody spend
most of the movie just looking?

It wasn't enough to just say,
"You're not allowed. It's a rule."

We felt that we needed to have
a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

Otherwise you'd just get impatient
with the movie.

And maybe we never did overcome
that for some people,

but the key to a really good love story

is the obstacle
that separates the lovers.

And the greater the obstacle,

the stronger the love has to be
to overcome it.

So, I thought,
what if this machine kills you?

That made... To me,
that actually made the whole story

a lot more profound.

And Terry dove into it.

He thought it was fantastic
that Doug has to literally die

in order to try to save Claire.

NURSE: What the hell?
DOCTOR: All right, hold on, everybody.

About exactly how Doug should arrive
when he's in the past.

Our sale draft of the script had him
arriving fully clothed

with his gun, his ID,
and a Brookhaven National Lab badge

that helped Claire at the end to figure
out what might be going on here.

Then Tony at one point
wanted him to go back naked.

And we thought that's a little bit
like The Terminator.

We ended up with Denzel
in his underwear. Collaboration.

SCOTT: I have a style.

I mean, it's not just the filming style,
it's the editing style,

and, you know, this is my eighth movie
with Chris Lebenzon, who's my editor.

And Chris, he was just the one editor.

You know, on Man on Fire
I had three different editors.

But Chris edited the...
He was the... He's the master.

And he... And Chris is,
this is my eighth movie.

But Chris is absolutely brilliant
in terms of story, character,

performance, timing.

And after eight movies,
obviously has become my right arm.

And this was...

It was a long movie on the page.

And when I say long,
the script was a little long.

But I tend to shoot things
at a given pace,

and so they tend to come out shorter

than the average director, say.
My rule of thumb, I think, is...

One page constitutes
one minute of screen time,

I think with me it's more like
two-thirds of a minute of screen time,

but my first cut,
when I'd finished shooting

was two hours, I think,
and three minutes.

That's brilliant for a first cut, you know.

But that's all down to Chris, Chris Leb,

'cause I was actually shooting
when he's doing all of that.

But Chris has got a knacky,
an uncanny...

Chris has an uncanny knack of,
you know, selecting

the right performance
for the right moment.

And being able to let things sit
and breathe a little bit more.

I've got, say, ADD, and I sort of,

when I'm left to my own devices,
it'll be like Domino on speed.

A bounty hunter on speed.

But Chris lets things breathe
and live and move,

and he always has a great shape
to every scene he does in a movie.

MARSILII: Now here, structurally,
this is kind of interesting

That we ever jump to a scene
that does not in any way include Doug.

We're seeing a moment
that took place in the past

But we're not looking through
the window.

The point of that structurally is that

we're seeing
what's about to happen to her

but Doug is racing to get there.

SCOTT: I've got an amazingly strong
family in terms of my work family,

and they all have a say.

You know, Chris Seagers,
who's my production designer,

You know, Chris was my art director
on Spy Game.

And I made him
my production designer

right at the beginning of Spy Game.

And he stunned me
when he did Spy Game.

He did Man on Fire, he did Domino,
and he's done D�j� Vu with me.

And Chris is tireless, tireless in
his pursuit of getting things better,

and making it work,
and he's a huge talent.

And the same
with Harry Gregson-Williams,

who does my music, you know.

Harry's got a little bit of a tortured soul.

Harry's a little bit of Man on Fire,
he's a little bit of Creasy.

And every time he does a movie
he gives a part of his soul,

so that's why the scores that he does
are so interesting, 'cause they're...

Harry's very sweet
and he's got a very dark side as well

so you always get that combination.

So again,
he's one of what I call my family.

MARSILII: Also here we see
Doug getting shot

which became vitally important.

After Tony initially signed on,

one of the things
that he was concerned about was

after the rescue of Claire,

he didn't feel that Doug was strongly
motivated enough to take her home.

At one point he'd even suggested
cutting that entire sequence

and going straight to the ferry.

But he had a point.

And the way that we got around it
was having Doug get shot here.

Then it required them
to go to her house

because he wasn't
going to make it otherwise.

SCOTT: You know, this bait camp in
the bayou was actually a working store.

It was a working bait camp.
And the people who ran the bait camp,

they were an old couple,
very sweet couple who were retired,

and they lived in the house next door.

But they said,
"Listen, we wanna remodel."

I said, "Done. We'll help you remodel."

So we blew...
So now the store got rebuilt.

So that was the store they wanted
to remodel, that thing in flames there.

That's what's called
"Hollywood remodeling."

MARSILII: This explosion and fire,

beyond the physical spectacle of it,

and we all love it
when something blows up real good,

it was important to the story
that Oerstadt believe

Claire and Doug are dead.

Otherwise, it would not
quite be plausible

that he continues with
his plan if he thinks

that there's a cop or somebody
who's already on his case.

By blowing the place up

and allowing him to drive off
without seeing them escape,

it makes it a bit more plausible

that Oerstadt still thinks
he can get away with this.

He's already killed one agent.

Now he believes
he's killed these folks as well.

And he's on his way
to blow up the ferry in Claire's car.

I'm a federal agent. Hang on, hang on.

There's only one reason, really,

that I wanted Claire to have
a hood over her head,

because that moment when they look
into each other's eyes for the first time,

that was something that...
It was just that much stronger

Later, when Doug seems to
know too much about her,

Creates so much suspicion in her

that it motivates
everything that follows.

SCOTT: Denzel falling in love
with Paula,

that was a challenge in itself,

because they never
get together on-screen

until you're an hour into the movie.

BRUCKHEIMER: No, I think
the major concern with the fact

that they don't have
much screen time is,

when do we get them together?

How quickly can we get
them together on-screen?

So, we constantly had to look
at the screenplay

and find out ways
to bring them together much sooner.

MARSILII:
And especially in a story like this,

every moment they do have counts,

because he's had four days to become
emotionally attached to her.

Here she has really a matter of hours.

And every look Paula gives him,
every moment, every touch,

is so delicate, it really helps us.

SCOTT: And so, I was worried that
the love story, or the relationship,

whatever you wanna call it,
wouldn't work.

You know, but I think
the strength is in the...

You know, one,
in terms of how I shot it,

but two, most of all, the chemistry
between the two people,

between Paula and Denzel,

and, you know, Denzel's commitment
to making this relationship work.

I think that I managed to pull it off.

MARSILII: One of the lovely things
about this to me is that,

here you've got a man who knows
everything about this woman.

He's read her dairies, he's gone
through everything she owns,

he's watched her
in the most private moments of her life.

She doesn't know a thing about him.

He's gonna have to try
as hard as he can to play this properly,

so that he doesn't come off to her
like a stalker.

SCOTT: And this house we shot,
you know, Claire's apartment,

was actually in a house which was in

a suburb of New Orleans
called the Bywater.

And the house had
a preservation order on it, though,

so we couldn't put nails in the walls
or do anything, so...

But the people were very sweet,

so we actually built
the house on-stage,

but we took all the doors,
all the windows, from the real house,

and brought them to the stage,
so that's why I think it feels like a real...

And that... You know, that's what I do
with Chris, it's the same.

Actually, it's funny, I just realized
it's the same rule of thumb, so...

What Chris Seagers,
my production designer, and I do,

we always find real locations

and then we then we build them
if we have to.

You know, we always take the...
Everything.

Beg, borrow and steal
as much dressing

as we can from the real locations,

'cause it's funny, real life,
it's always hard to reproduce,

it's always much
stranger than fiction, you know.

And so, Chris and I, we'd beg, borrow
and steal from the real locations and...

But that's the way we...
You know, you can say,

"God, I wonder what
her house looks like."

So, we looked at,

you know, in terms of
Claire on the page,

what does her house really look like?

And Claire, you know...

And Paula's character
in the original script,

she was a child's book illustrator,

and I felt it was a little too saccharine
and a little too cliched.

So, when I started scouting,

when I first went down
to New Orleans,

I met a girl who was a maitre d'
in a restaurant,

and I found it much more real
to have a working girl as a...

You know, who did...

She painted some murals
inside her apartment,

but I felt a real girl was
much more interesting,

so Paula's character, and her work,
was based off this real girl

we met at a restaurant
in New Orleans,

and I gave that character to Paula.

And then I got her to go and
spend time working as a maTtre d'

in one of the hot restaurants,
called NOLA,

just to get a sense of, you know,

not just about how you're a maitre d',

but it'd give a sense of
who the people are around you.

And you always get ideas
when you touch the real world.

MARSILII: Tony's big note
about these scenes,

once Doug and Claire
are actually together is that,

he felt that the less of them, the better.

He very much wanted
to get to the ferry.

We had scripted,
and he had even shot,

a bit more between them,

more character moments,

moments where Doug is telling her
what he knows about her

It's very fortunate

that Denzel and Paula have
such a strong chemistry together.

That's something that, as a writer,
you can really only pray for.

The danger of this story,
structurally, is that

it's a love story
where the man and the woman

really don't have
that much time together

If they don't seem
made for each other,

the whole thing can really, kind of,
just fall flat.

SCOTT: Now, we talked, and the
writers here, they said the same.

This is, you know,
this is a piece of Hitchcock.

This movie, this story, is a piece
of, you know, movie history.

And to be honest,
I was never a great fan of Hitchcock's.

But Hitchcock's movies, you know,
they were great films, but they're not...

It's like, people say,
"What sort of painting do you like?"

And I'd say, you know, "I'm not into,

"you know, modern, contemporary,
abstract painters, you know.

"I'm more into Hieronymous Bosch
and Brueghel, "

psychological, religious persecution.

Yeah, so...

No, listen, he did some really
interesting movies,

but they were not...
They were, I don't know...

I mean, Roman Polanski, Nic Roeg,

they were the guys
that I sort of aspired to, they were...

I don't want the word more "strange,"
"surreal," "odd."

Yeah, I think I, too, son' of...

My guiding lights
in terms of the older cinema.

Nic Roeg has been one of my
biggest guiding lights.

I think I've said before,

his movie Performance,
his first movie, was...

I've stolen from that movie
so many times.

Yeah. Others... I steal from everybody.

MARSILII: Now it all starts paying off.

Up until now, it was possible
for Doug and for the audience

to believe he'd actually saved Claire.

But now, as moments like this
start replaying themselves,

Donnelly writing her number
on the candy wrapper,

the blood that's going to be found
later on will turn out to be Doug's,

as everything starts to dovetail

and fold back onto itself plot-wise,

we start to wonder if he's ever going to
be able to change anything at all.

I'll let you in on a little secret here,

this answering machine moment...
Originally, as scripted,

Doug was going to lip-synch perfectly
Beth's message

as it was being left.

I don't know if
they ever shot a take that way,

but ultimately, I think
they just felt it wouldn't play.

SCOTT: I mean, it's funny,
obviously, this...

The location in New Orleans
didn't resemble

what was in the original screenplay,

which was Long Island,

and the ferry journey
is a much longer journey

in Long Island than it was here.
This is just a very short hop.

It's a 17-minute hop across the river.

But the writers came down, and...

When I was actually...

A week before I started shooting,
and sort of said,

"Wow. I don't know
how this is gonna work."

But you know...

It's hard for a writer, 'cause they
fall in love with what they've written.

And they see it.
The location is... They see it.

Then we try to give them
something else,

and you have to adapt
to what you find.

You know...

So I, obviously, had
a big adaptation to do

to get away from Long Island
to New Orleans,

but New Orleans is so much,

I felt, the better place
for this story and this movie.

Then on our, you know,
our very first ferry,

when we were scouting,
our first trip across the river,

we got diverted
because a tanker came through.

And that diversion pulled us towards
the bridge, which gave me the idea,

which is now in the movie,

the ferry gets diverted
and goes underneath a bridge,

which is a good excuse for a much
better location for the ferry to blow.

And that's what also gave me the idea
about the guy on the bridge watching,

that, whether you get it or not
in the movie, the guy...

When he sees
the ferry coming towards him,

and he knows it's gonna blow,
he splits, gets on his bike and goes.

So, all of that all comes about through
scouting locations, you know.

It was actually, you know, Chris
Seagers, my production designer,

and Marshall Vernet,
one of my location guys,

and Richard Klotz, they sent me back
these pictures.

And the pictures, in terms of

the ferry docks,
and the journey that the ferry took...

Then, you know, it was actually
Chris Seagers that said, you know,

"You know, what happens if
these guys were in

So, it was Chris' idea to say that
these sailors were coming in for

Mardi Gras, for the weekend.

Once Oerstadt sees
his own car back there,

he realizes that Doug and Claire
are not, in fact, dead,

and the final act of the picture
really kicks into gear.

One of the things that's a staple
of bomb movies,

that Terry and I both desperately
wanted to get away from,

was the clich� of the digital timer
that you keep cutting back to,

to show how many
seconds we have left.

So many polite bombers that put these
big, readable timers on their bombs.

Instead, the countdown,
the ticking clock, so to speak,

is the inevitable repeat
of a series of events

that we saw at the top of the movie.

The teacher counting the children,
the horn going off, the captain talking,

everything repeating exactly.

All while Doug and Claire
are running around underneath them

trying to avert a disaster.

And every time we see
one of those events replay itself,

it's just one more clue that
maybe they're not changing anything.

SCOTT: We used a lot of our extras.
On our biggest day, on the ferry

That sounds very indulgent,

but when you look at that ferry,
and you do aerial shots of the ferry,

750 people disappear like that.

So the whole idea was
meant to be a full ferry.

So our biggest days were, I think, 750.

But it's funny,
all these uniforms you see here,

a lot of the guys came from
the naval base in New Orleans,

but we couldn't use their actual
uniforms, we had to wardrobe them.

But, you know,
when we first started shooting,

right after Katrina,

originally there were 500,000 people
every night who slept in New Orleans,

after Katrina it went down to 60,000.

By the time we started shooting
it was still 60,000.

By the time we finished shooting
it was 250,000. So that was good.

The confidence in the city,
not because of the film,

but just people were coming back.

But there were not a lot of people
in New Orleans,

so we had to ferry a lot of people,

we had to bus people in
from Baton Rouge every day.

We had huge busloads
leaving at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.

Then all these guys that you see
had to be wardrobed. Yeah.

MARSILII: One of the reasons
that we ended up

choosing a ferry disaster, Terry and I,

was there were
a number of virtues to it cinematically.

One, it had never been done,
to my knowledge.

I'd never seen something like this.

Plane crashes have unfortunately
been done to death in movies.

A ferry is a visually interesting place

to stage
a cat-and-mouse suspense sequence.

There are multiple levels,
some indoors, some outdoors,

lots of innocent people around.

Also, the deep water makes
the evidence so much harder to obtain

and thus it helps justify
the use of a time-window.

And it's also a contained space.

Once the boat sets sail,

there's no way for Doug, Claire
or anybody else to escape the bomb.

Doug has to solve the problem
or everybody dies.

It worked out very well for us I think.

No passengers allowed, sir.

SCOTT: In the script
this sequence was very different.

Obviously, the ferry that they had
in the script was a Long Island ferry

And it was very much
motivated by action shootout

and the bad guy, in the original script,

was carrying pipe-bombs
that he kept throwing around.

So this, I tried to structure it,

I tried to make Jim Cavieze|'s
character very much more real.

MARSILII: Tony very much wanted
Caviezel to come off as a...

He mentioned Robert De Niro
in Taxi Driver

where this guy's got his guns,
he's unstoppable,

and he just marches through
shooting anybody that gets in his way.

SCOTT: And then the location itself,
the ferry itself,

dictated how the set piece laid out,
how Denzel and he faced off,

and have this monologue
with each other at the end.

But that stuff's hard, 'cause you know
you got to tell the story,

and then you gotta tell the story
between the two characters

that had to drive the Bronco
off the ferry and into the water

and trying to keep those things real

without them becoming sort of
old-fashioned action set pieces,

that's hard. It's a real challenge. So...

But I think it's successful.
I think it works.

MARSILII: One of the nice things
about this,

as Doug starts to draw Oerstadt out,

we can see he's got a plan
even if it's not clear yet.

So Doug starts using
Oerstadt's own words against him.

And you can even imply

that Oerstadt's having a dej� vu
moment here that will cost him his life.

One of the other things
I'm kind of proud of here

is that so often in a hostage situation,

you know, where you've got a woman
who's tied up,

she doesn't take any part
in her own rescue.

We wanted to give Claire
something more active.

Who are you?

So Doug depends on her
at this moment to save his life,

even though she has to do
something horrible in order to do it.

SCOTT: You know, and Paul Cameron,
this is my second movie with Paul,

I've done many commercials.
And Paul is...

No, no. The last movie I did with him
was Man on Fire.

So, Paul loves to experiment,
try different things, and he is...

Paul's brilliant in terms of,
you know, technology

and to do something like this,
I mean cross-processing, you know,

and shooting
in all the different formats,

and we were shooting in terms of,

you know,
the digital world and the film world,

was a really dangerous thing
to do, so...

But with Paul I always
have confidence in him.

He can take me right to an edge.

It's irreversible.
You're left sitting on this knife edge,

in terms of the final released
product, your film,

and your DVDs,
and your digital world, yeah.

" ' '

He always gets it right then,
gets it there in a great way.

'Cause the film is so...
I mean, I think it's the most rich and...

Densely rich and most...
What's the word?

Contrasty, in the best possible way,
movie, that I've ever done.

MARSILII:
When I wrote this action beat,

with the ferry running over the car,

and causing it to tumble upside down,

I was working other jobs,

my screenwriting career had gone
fallow, and I really

could only imagine how they would
ever pull this off,

if I was lucky enough to see it happen.

And they did. I'm really amazed at how

this sequence looks.

SCOTT: This particular sequence here,

this stuff, we shot
at Warner Brothers, underwater.

And Paula had swum,
but she wasn't a great swimmer.

Denzel was a strong swimmer.

So, imagine how scary it was
being 30 feet down in a tank,

inside a car which is on a...
It's like a rotisserie,

you know, that's being barrel-rolled
along, and you're on a hooker line,

which is like a tank, air tank, yeah.

And you gotta take that line out
and then swim out, you know.

And then, when you swim out,

you gotta get 30 feet out
beyond the hull of the ship.

So, Paula was a real trouper,
'cause she was terrified.

She had claustrophobia,
'cause she's inside this car.

The car's underneath the hull
of the ship.

When it's being rotisseried
and slamming against

D was great. So, what you
saw there, we had doubles,

you know, we had
stunt doubles doing it,

but I'd say the majority
was Denzel and Paula.

MARSILII: Let you in on
a little secret here, too.

In the original version of the script,

Claire was literally blown
out of the water.

She was still struggling to reach
the surface when the bomb went off.

She hit the water face down
and was floating,

just like a doll.

SCOTT: Then, this end of
the movie here, was the...

Which was always the biggest
leap for me, when Denzel

turns up at the end, getting
the audience to buy into the fact

that Denzel lived because of what we
explained earlier in the movie about

parallel or diverse universes,

that there's a second Denzel
somewhere else

at the same point in time.

And this... You know, this was
the culmination of the love story.

So, it's funny, the movie does give you
a sentimental jolt.

And I was surprised, I mean,
how people responded in that way,

which was the best possible response
I could have got, because

it was very hard to pull that off.
Well, it's very hard to pull off.

It's pulled off because of Denzel,
because of Paula.

But it was dangerous
whether this end would come off,

It could have divorced you totally
from the emotional content

MARSILII: Originally,
in the opening scenes

of the movie, after the ferry explodes

and Doug comes to the dock
to investigate,

we had rain,
at least scripted, we had rain.

In the scenes afterwards,
where Doug's on the boat,

because we needed that
in order to obliterate the evidence.

But originally,
all the scenes at the dock,

were covered in torrential downpour.

And at the end of the movie,
when Doug comes to get Claire,

and he's alive again,

it's drizzling, but it starts to taper off

That's different from what happened
at the beginning of the movie.

And the last lines
of the film, originally...

...he has his d�j� vu moment,
he's looking out of the window,

and Claire says, "What is it?"

Doug says,
"It was supposed to rain all day."

And they look outside,
and it has stopped raining.

And the last line of the movie
was Claire turning to him and saying,

"I guess God changed his mind."

Fast forward to the day that we shot it.

I wasn't there this particular day,

but they had several hundred feet
of scaffold over the dock

in order to provide rain.

Everything was good to go.

And the sun was
so brilliantly bright out,

it was like 98 degrees,
not a cloud in the sky.

They couldn't even fake the rain.

0on9-.

To see the ferry explode,

Chad took me aside and very...

Chad Oman very delicately
informed me that

we had to change the ending
just a little bit,

And I stood there smiling and nodding
as he explained it all to me,

and he said, "Don't freak out,"

and finally I pointed at my own face,
I said, "Look at me. I'm fine, I'm okay."

He said, "Yeah?" I said, "Yeah."

What can I say?

If God wanted the movie to end
that way,

he'd have helped us out
with some cloud cover.

SCOTT: And then Macy Gray, we had...

You remember Macy?
She was in Domino.

And she does the final song
in the movie now.

And Macy's great, because, you know,

the danger with the song
at the end of the movie, is it becomes,

you know, a little too...
What's the word?

Is mainstream, or a little too
on the nose, you know.

But Macy's voice is so great,

and she's got such mystery,
and she embodied so much about...

Her voice embodied so much of
what I wanted the movie to feel like.

People always ask me, you know,
in terms of the press,

"So, tell us about your d�j� vu"

I say, 'cause I'm 62, dej� vu
gets difficult to differentiate between

memory loss, or did it actually...

Have I been there,
have I not really been there?

And, it was funny, the title always...
I was surprised, actually,

because I thought D�ja Vu sounds a
little too artsy for an American public,

you know, for a Jerry movie,

and, like, a little too artsy, but...

And they liked the fact
that the public were a little...

It's a little mysterious,
a little confusing,

because that's the nature
of the screenplay that they had.

So, they built into it
those strengths, doing it.

But you know, the first thing I do
when you get a title like oegavu...

So I said, I mean,
"What does d�ja vu mean to you?"

And everybody's got a
different interpretation.

So, I went to the Oxford
English Dictionary

and looked in there, and they said,

"It's an uncomfortable feeling
about a place you've been before,

"a person you've been with before."

So, it's funny,
'cause that word, "uncomfortable,"

then became my key
to my day every day.

Always... Whether it's
Denzel's performance, or...

The movie gave it this odd
and uncomfortable, odd feeling.

And so, that was sort
of a driving force,

one of my driving forces through...

You know, through the movie.

Okay, so, that was my journey.

That was my journey into a world
which frightened me.

That was my journey into a world
that I got to educate myself,

Educate and entertain, and I hope
this movie did it for you.

In honor of New Orleans, and
I wanna see the city back on its feet.

And it's amazing
that the public spirit there...

How much,
how strong it was after Katrina.

And I want them to get it back
to where they were before Katrina.

Thank you.

BRUCKHEIMER: Well,
we really appreciate you joining us

for this commentary in D�j� Vu.

It was a very complicated movie,
a very interesting movie.

It's a movie you have to see more
than once, there are a lot of clues

that you miss the first time,

and I know you'll appreciate them
when you see them again.

(COMING BACK TO YOU PLAYING)

(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)